‘Do I take it that you have heard nothing from them since?’ asked John.
‘Nothing, but my father was a martinet and I suppose that it was he whom I was rebelling against when I attacked my Captain’s unthinking cruelty. My mother feared him, as did my brothers and sisters. He was proud of me, too, which I suppose made my offence seem worse.’
He gave a mirthless laugh. ‘Well, all that is long gone. I have a new life here, and one which is in many ways more worthwhile than the one I lost.’
‘All the same, though, your story is a sad one,’ John said. ‘Would you like me to use my influence to help you to return home with a good name? I have many powerful friends in high office and, God knows, it would be little enough to do for you after your rescue of Sarah.’
‘You are very kind, but no, my home is here. I am happy and to return would only serve to reopen old wounds.’
‘Nevertheless,’ John told him, ‘my offer stands. You have only to change your mind, and I will do what I can.’
Sarah was proud of John’s gratitude. She sometimes thought him too cold, too inclined to be Langley of Prior’s Langley, but his kindness to Alan warmed her heart.
She took Alan’s teacup from him. ‘Well, that is settled, then. Now I must ask you for your help, Dr Kerr. One of my pupils is suffering from some ailment, and I must ask you to visit us tomorrow in order to examine her. I cannot make her mother understand that she is ill and not naughty. That is a frequent error, I find.’
‘Indeed, Miss Langley. Heretical as it may seem, there are times when I think it a pity that women may not be doctors. They often demonstrate such a sound understanding of the cause of many human illnesses. It may be because they use their emotions, as well as their intellect, when trying to understand what ails those around them.’
‘Most heretical of you, Dr Kerr,’ Sarah riposted with a rueful smile. ‘Think what I have endured for wishing to be a painter. I cannot begin to imagine how I should be treated were I to assert that I wished to be a surgeon!’
She looked so charmingly animated when she came out with this that Alan had to repress a terrible urge to kiss her on the spot, John or no John! Such an action would have had him drummed out of the Langleys’ home nearly as severely as the English courts had treated him.
‘True, but all the same, think how extremely capably you dealt with Nellie, without any training whatsoever.’
‘Oh, that was common sense, Dr Kerr, and you forget that I frequented the stables as a girl and knew where and how foals were born—even though I shouldn’t have done.’
Alan could not stop himself from coming out with, ‘As a girl, Miss Langley? Why, you are only a girl still.’
His eyes were full of admiration. It was the most open admission yet of his true feelings for her, and its effect on Sarah was so strong that she was overwhelmed with shyness—she, Sarah Langley, who was never shy. She had never been backward in flirtatious interludes back home, before Charles had destroyed her confidence in herself, but she felt a strange reluctance to flirt with Dr Alan Kerr.
It was not the presence of John that was affecting her, though that was a factor, but rather that her own feelings for Alan, and his for her, were too serious for the frivolous exchanges that had amused her in England.
Their eyes met over the filled teacup which she was offering to him, and she was aware that her hand was shaking.
To change the subject to lighter matters she asked him if his attendance at the Banquet was certain, since he approved of it, and he replied that it was. His own feelings were struck, too, and were all the stronger for being repressed. He was becoming more and more certain that she was not indifferent to him, but to declare his love was impossible.
Their conversation had reminded him yet again that he was nothing more than a transported criminal, and that restoration of the standing he had once enjoyed in society was, despite John’s generous offer, also impossible. Alan did not see the ardent looks that Sarah was directing at him, but John did, and putting his portfolio down—he had found his painting of the wombat—he wondered. for the first time whether bringing Sarah to New South Wales with him had been altogether wise.
Kerr was a good enough fellow, despite his sad history, but to consider him as a brother-in-law… No, that was impossible!
Chapter Eight
The Governor’s Banquet saw Sarah, dressed in her turquoise gown, and with the mantilla trailing across her shoulders, sitting next to young Captain Stephen Parker at the dinner table. He was one of her many admirers. The dining room of Government House had frequently been called majestic, and certainly the ninety people who sat down at three o’clock to partake of what could only be called a sumptuous repast after the indifferent fare to which they were used could have been forgiven if they had assumed that they were eating in one of the great European capitals and not in a southern wilderness.
Sarah usually found colonial boasting irritating, but she told Stephen that, for once, the locals had not exaggerated. Governor Macquarie had excelled himself.
‘True,’ said Stephen. ‘The only fly in the ointment, if you will forgive me for saying so, Miss Langley, is having to sit down with so many of these dammed Emancipists. I wonder at the Governor, I really do. He seemed to be a stickler for the proprieties back home. I can’t think what has come over him since he arrived here. Doctor Kerr’s presence is almost bearable, but to expect us to hobnob with Dilhorne is too much.’
‘I believe,’ said Sarah carefully—and not for the first time—‘that he thinks that Dilhorne and his kind will still be here when we are gone, and that, to some extent, the colony’s future will be in their hands.’
Captain Parker laughed. ‘The colony’s future! You’re bamming me, Miss Langley! I suppose that all ladies are sentimentalists. What future is there in this little settlement on the edge of the world? I find Macquarie’s pretence of a capital city with courthouses and hospitals a nonsense. I’m told that he’s thinking of building a library. Here, among the black and white savages!’
With some difficulty Sarah held her tongue. The arrival of a great dish of pineapple saved her from an immediate reply. Why had she never noticed before the insensitivity of so many of the men who surrounded her? Stephen Parker was quite a good sort, but his attitude to the colony jarred on her. Apart from that, though, he was a pleasant dinner companion.
To avoid further conversation she toasted him with her half-filled wine glass—‘To England and home, Captain Parker.’
‘And beauty, madam,’ he added gallantly.
And doubtless, thought Sarah, he thinks that he’s converted me to his views because I haven’t argued with him. And that’s a new thing, too. A few months ago I would have argued with him. What can be happening to me? I must be adopting Lucy’s defensive colouring.
One advantage of a Sydney gathering, so far as the ladies were concerned, was that there was a shortage of women so that any halfway pretty girl found herself surrounded by admiring young men. And old men, too, thought Sarah amusedly, having had some tricky encounters with elderly officers of the garrison who were tired of confining their amorous attentions to the various ladies of the town in Sydney’s slum district of The Rocks.
Stephen, however, had noticed Sarah’s tact and considered that the Governor could do with a little of it.
‘You may not have heard, Miss Langley, that the Governor has made himself unpopular with most of the men in the colony because he has closed down many of Sydney’s seventy-five public houses.’
Sarah forbore to tell him that Dr Kerr had already informed her of this latest hotly debated measure, and had expressed approval of it. He considered drink to be a curse, and not only because of his own unhappy experience of its dangers.
Drinking was not confined to grog shops, however: drinking at the Banquet had begun immediately after the mid-day review of the troops. On top of that, during the meal no less than nineteen official toasts had been proposed, as well as private ones, such as Sarah�
��s. The noise in the vast room had risen to a roar, and it was obvious that some of those whose toasting had been more than merely token would have difficulty in joining in the strolling round the lawns outside when dinner was over.
Sarah’s enjoyment was unforced, particularly when, once the company had streamed convivially outside, she found herself next to Alan Kerr, who asked her gravely, ‘I wonder what you think of a colonial celebration, Miss Langley?’
Her green eyes shone at him. She had not overindulged, but she had taken just enough wine to make her feel that the day, the weather and the company were magnificent, that the men were all witty and the women all beautiful.
‘Oh, it’s beyond belief,’ she said.
Alan, who as usual, had drunk only water, took her arm and they walked up and down, enjoying the playing of numerous popular songs and operatic pieces by the Regimental band. He thought that Sarah had never looked so beautiful: the turquoise silk set off her vivid colouring, and enhanced her glittering eyes. The wave of desire that broke over him was as shocking as it was sudden.
‘The gardens are lovely,’ said Sarah, who was suffering herself from her nearness to a man to whom she was growing more and more attracted. She was, though, genuinely impressed by the profusion of flowering plants in the colony and frequently stopped to admire the many pretty cottage gardens on her walks through Sydney. At home the labourers on the Langley estates filled their plots with vegetables, mostly cabbages, with only a few flowers between the rows.
‘Then you must meet the garden’s creator,’ said Alan, conscious that he must remove the temptation to him which she unwittingly presented, and that this could be accomplished by presenting her to a fellow Scot, Charles Fraser. He already knew that Sarah was a keen gardener back in England and he sorrowfully surrendered her to his friend and, apparently casually, drifted away.
He was also conscious of the fact that John Langley was not happy if he stayed too long in Sarah’s company. He had no wish to distress his kind friend, even if leaving Sarah cost him more than one pang. He walked through a crowd of footmen carrying even more drinks for the official guests, anxious to serve them before the general public were admitted to the gardens when dusk fell.
Sarah was enchanted to discover from Charles Fraser, who immediately added himself to the growing list of her admirers, that the oranges in the boughs of the trees were illuminated by lamps specially hung there. ‘It’s a genuine fairy grove, Mr Fraser,’ she told him. ‘Your notion, I presume?’
Charles Fraser confessed that it was the Governor who had inspired the decorations. ‘He’s a remarkable man, Miss Langley. He’s not properly appreciated. When I consider what the colony was like when he came, and what he is now making of it I am full of respect for him. By the time he has finished we shall have a true capital city here.’
Sarah agreed with him. They strolled round the flower beds, drinking in the perfumed dusk, until good manners dictated that she freed him to talk to other guests. Wine-glass in hand, full of the joys of good company and good food, she came upon Sukie on the arm of John’s man, Carter.
‘Oh, Miss Sarah!’ Sukie’s eyes shone in the light from the flambeaux, made from great boughs of Norfolk Island pine. ‘It’s beautiful, ain’t it?’
Her hair had been properly cut and dressed, and, wearing one of Sarah’s old gowns, cut down to fit her, she was a pretty girl, hardly recognisable as the dirty slattern Sarah had first seen in her kitchen.
In the months since the birth of Nellie’s baby Sukie had blossomed under Sarah’s influence. She had learned to read and write and had been persuaded that washing herself was not something odd that the gentry did to pass the time. She had even been persuaded to try her hand at sewing, where her first efforts were nearly as clumsy as Sarah’s had been.
Sarah smiled at the pair of them. She felt full of an infinite well-being. Carter smiled back at her. He, too, was well turned out and she wished that Alan had been with her when she had found them. He would have been pleased, she knew, to see them so happy together.
‘Very beautiful,’ she said. ‘It’s nothing like home, but then, Sydney isn’t.’
‘Aye, that it’s not,’ said Carter, ‘and all the better for being different—if you don’t mind me saying so, Miss Sarah.’
No, she didn’t mind, but it struck her that, back in England, she would have resented Carter’s cheerful frankness. What was happening to her? Ever since she had arrived in New South Wales her whole life seemed to have turned upside down, as though being transported so far across the wide globe had changed everything, including herself. She no longer thought or felt as she had once done.
It had not changed John, though, and a few moment later she was pleased that he was nowhere in sight when Tom Dilhorne came up to her. He had been at the banquet, but seated far away from her, and for a moment she did not recognise him. He was wearing the clothes of a gentleman, his hair had been brushed into a Brutus cut and, for the first time, he was indistinguishable from the officers and officials around him.
‘Miss Langley,’ he said, bowing. ‘I have to congratulate you on the change you have brought about in Miss Sukie.’
‘Oh, she has done a large part of that herself.’
He looked keenly at her. ‘You are generous, Miss Langley. Most women would have taken all the credit for her transformation, but then, as I am well aware, you are not most women.’
His voice had changed, too. It also was indistinguishable from that of the officers around them. She remembered that Alan Kerr had once told them that he was an excellent mimic.
‘You flatter me, I think.’
‘Oh, no,’ he said, ‘I never flatter anyone, it is not my way. Besides, there is something else I wish to say to you here, privately, where none may hear us. It is this: being the woman that you are, I trust that you will take care not to hurt my good friend, Dr Kerr. I believe that you are clever enough to understand what I am saying.’
Sarah, being Sarah, knew what he meant and replied, gently but firmly, ‘And I, Mr Dilhorne, am I not to be hurt, too?’
His smile for her was a frank one. ‘Oh, yes, Miss Langley, you are quite as clever as I thought you to be. Remember, though, that in affairs of the heart, cleverness is not enough, indeed, has little to do with them. Forgive me for raising this with you, but your bravery, as I well know, is not confined to your physical activities, it is also related to the manner in which you face the world.’
Sarah did not know what surprised her the most: Tom Dilhorne’s understanding of the world of men and women, or his ability to speak in good clear articulate English, quite unlike his usual hard, if not coarse, manner.
He smiled again. ‘By your expression I see that you have understood me. We shall not speak of this again, but I trust you to do the right thing, however much it might pain you.’
His bow was one of farewell. He had scarcely had time to leave her before Pat Ramsey was by her side.
‘Was that commoner Dilhorne troubling you, Miss Langley? If he was, I will see that he never troubles you again.’
‘Not at all, Captain Ramsey. I find that he has a fund of good sense, and if you ever cared to talk to him with any consideration for what I understand that he has accomplished since he arrived here, I think that you would enjoy his company rather more than that of many of the men in Sydney.’
She thought for moment that she had gone too far, but, like many people, she had underrated Pat Ramsey.
He gave a long low whistle and shook his head at her. ‘Suitably reprimanded, Miss Langley. I have to say that in his borrowed plumes he looks a different man from the one who usually roams Sydney, so you may be right. I thought that for a moment he might have been troubling you with his intentions.’
To his surprise Sarah began to laugh. ‘No, indeed, quite the contrary. You need have no fear of that.’
‘Excellent. There is one thing that I ought to say to you, and here, where we are private among the many, is perhaps the best time to say
it. My feelings for you are strong. Were I other than a poverty-stricken younger son who fears to be seen as a fortune hunter, I would pay the utmost attention to you myself. Because of my circumstances, however, friendship with you is all that I may aspire to. I hope that knowing this, you will not turn away from me. I also believe that all that you wish from me is friendship and, given that, let us be happy together without commitment.’
Sarah was secretly amused at how much Pat’s introduction to his little speech resembled that of Tom Dilhorne. It was plain that he had more in common with the despised Emancipist than he knew. She could never love Pat Ramsey, handsome and kind though he was, since, without knowing how it had come about, Sarah had discovered that she was in thrall to quite another type of man. Nevertheless, Tom Dilhorne had asked her to be kind to Alan Kerr, so it also behoved her to be kind to Pat.
‘Certainly we may remain friends. I have not so many that I can afford to turn one away.’
He bowed to her, reminding her of Tom. ‘Then that is settled, and we may proceed as we mean to go on. There is to be a giant bonfire. Will you allow me to escort you to the little hill that overlooks the garden where we shall have a good view of everything? Frank is up there already, with Lucy Middleton.’
‘I shall be delighted, and pray call me Sarah. As a friend I would like you to be Pat to me as you are to Lucy and Frank. Also…’ and she hesitated a little fearing to presume too much, but it needed to be said ‘…I hope that, one day, you will find someone who will be only too happy to be Mrs Pat Ramsey.’
‘That is most kind of you, and now, take my arm.’
They walked off together. Sarah told herself that she ought to be flattered by what has passed, but, she thought, what I mostly feel is that I must be careful not to hurt people’s feelings. I’m sure that I never thought of such a thing before, but I must remember it in future.
An Unconventional Heiress Page 12